1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a multimedia information retrieval method, program, record medium and system for the efficient retrieval of multimedia information and, more particularly to a multimedia information retrieval method, program, record medium and system for the efficient retrieval of information sets comprised of pairs of image information and text information.
2. Description of the Related Arts
Recent years there have been increasing occasions for PC users to come into contact with multimedia information in proportion to PCs' performance improvements coupled with growth in amount of information handled by each user, as a result of which it has become necessary to find needed information from among such pieces of multimedia information. There is a conventional method for multimedia information retrieval, in which text information accompanying multimedia information is keyword-retrieved.
However, the traditional multimedia information retrieval method by keyword is unable to assure high search accuracy unless search criteria precisely representing target information can be given. In the case of multimedia information, in particular, it is difficult to specify search criteria which can precisely represent target information. Additionally, users themselves have often only ambiguous understanding of target information. For this reason, users can only specify broad search criteria, thus causing a great number of matches to be found. Even if users, faced with such numerous matches, attempt to narrow their search by giving a new keyword, they find it difficult to determine what type of keyword would be appropriate. Consequently, users need to narrow their search by repeatedly specifying a randomly-chosen keyword, which has made it difficult to assure high search accuracy and efficiency.